Tuscany by train or bus

Cari

New member
I’d love some advice about our plan to spend time in Tuscany following a Mediterranean cruise next year early July. We dock in Venice on a Saturday morning and thought to spend the rest of the weekend there. Then take a train to Florence Monday morning, and a later train to Cortona as a base for 3 nights, doing day trips from there. Keen to visit Montepulcio, Sienna and Assisi .... other recommendations most welcome. And then to Rome on Thursday, overnighting and fly out on Friday. I’d be most grateful for advice as to where I find information about train and bus travel for these journeys on the Internet. Thanks.
 
Cruising through Italy

Buongiorno,

That sound like a lovely itinerary, covering several lovely areas in both Italy and Tuscany.

A train is definitely your best solution, from Venice all the way to Rome! and you will find all the information you need at this link below.

When leaving Venice you will most probably leave from the Santa Lucia station (Mestre is on the mainland and not the main station for Venice) as for Florence, I believe most trains from Venice come into SMN (Santa Maria Novella) which leaves you in the heart of the historic center of the city. When you head towards Cortona, you will most probably be looking for the station Camuscia as Cortona doesn't have a train that goes through the city (because it is on a HILL!) and Camuscia is the town at the foot of the hill.

https://www.trenitalia.com/

Buon Viaggio,

Donna Denise
 
Are you spending a night in Florence at least? If you've never been, I highly recommend it!

As for using Cortona as your base, keep in mind that for day trips from Cortona, you'll use the bus and not the train to get to Siena and to Montepulciano.
Here's some info on the bus timetables using Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/jTnuhCWV8MP2
and here for Siena: https://goo.gl/maps/8pWZGwxt1JJ2

For Assisi, you'll need to do train and bus - here's a map with that info: https://goo.gl/maps/tFHoW7z5ZjJ2

You can see most day trips will require careful planning - most are over 2-3 hours each way which doesn't leave a lot of time for sightseeing at each place. In the end, you might want to consider renting a car to use while you're in Cortona as a base. The closest rental agencies are in Arezzo and Chiusi - you can do a search to see what comes up with rentalcars.com here: https://www.discovertuscany.com/tuscany-car-rental/

If you don't want to drive while here at all, then consider using either Florence and Siena as your bases instead of Cortona.
You can actually go to Cortona and Assisi from Florence with a guided tour, check this out: http://tours.discovertuscany.com/en...ona-Day-Trip-from-Florence/d27667-6367ATOUR10
And once you're in Siena, a guided tour to Montepulciano and get to see more of the Val d'Orcia that way (adding Pienza in).
Check this tour out: http://tours.discovertuscany.com/en...enza-and-Montepulciano-Wine-tour/d206-5919P28

From Siena, you can then continue on to Rome: Flixbus now has direct buses down from Siena so you don't have to do longer trips by train (which generally takes you back to Florence or has you go to Chiusi and change trains there).
 
Top